Chinese New Year celebrations

Chinese New Year is the biggest holiday of the year here.  Both kids dressed up in traditional Chinese costumes for school.

Charlotte with her lai see packet

 

Charlotte's class also had a CNY performance.  All the kids dressed up and they sang songs in Chinese and did dances.

Charlotte lined up with her class.  She is in the pink dress in the left corner.

The lion dance.  Charlotte is playing a drum in the group on the left.  She told me she had to play the drum loudly to scare away all the bad things from last year so they would have a good year.

Charlotte with some of her friends after the performance.

After the performance, the teachers gave each of the students a lai see packet.  A lai see packet is a red envelope given to children or employees/service workers for Chinese New Year.  They usually contain money.  Typically, each packet is supposed to contain a single bill and it is customary to go to the bank to get brand new bills for the packets.  You never give an amount of money with a 4 in it because the Chinese word for four is very similar to the word for death.  The lai see packets the kids got at school contained a gold chocolate coin.  It was good practice for the kids to learn how to receive the packets.  They are given and accepted with two hands and the kids said xiexie ("shay-shay" thank you in Chinese) to their teachers.  

I have been substituting teaching at the kids' school occasionally.  I worked most of the week before Chinese New Year.  The last day before their school break for the holiday was February 13th (or 13 February as they say here).  It was interesting to me that the whole week Valentine's Day was never mentioned at school.  Charlotte didn't bring home any heart crafts or anything.  The whole week was focused on Chinese New Year.  I loved not having to send valentine cards to school and not having the kids bring home 25+ Vday cards with candy.  (I did see several Valentine's Day promotions at many of the restaurants around town, so I know it is something they recognize here, although it could be something they promote to just cater to the expats).